Noel Pearson

I approached this Quarterly Essay with cautious optimism. And indeed, there's a lot of very good stuff in it. There's quite a bit of deliberate provocation as well, such as: 'Over the years I have often told people that there is a rough rule of thumb when it comes to examining the nostrums and prescriptions of the middle-class Left (black and white): whatever they say our people should do, we should look at approximately the opposite, because that will usually be the right thing to do.' Sadly there's quite a bit of that sort of straw-man argument in the essay. Coming to it pretty much ignorant of current educational debates, I am in no position to evaluate the detailed heart of its argument about what is to be done about Aboriginal inequality in education. I know nothing, for instance, about Siegfried Engelmann's Direct Instruction approach to education of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, by which Pearson places great theoretical and practical store. Pearson portrays him as a lone, successful evidence-based educationalist crying in the wilderness of vested (middle-class Left) interests that constitutes the educational establishment. He may be right. How would I know? Yet Pearson's account of the DI approach sounds awfully like the explicit and systematic approach to literacy of Australia's National Literacy Strategy, which as far as I know is being assiduously promulgated, even prescribed, by that same educational establishment. It makes me wonder if the lone voice strategy might not be counter-productive, as well as a little disingenuous.

Pearson writes, on page 77: 'Many debates about reality and its characterisation are relatively healthy and rational and we can readily agree that they should submit to scientific resolution. It is when interests are strong that irrationality and ideology come to hold an awesome sway, and science, even when it offers illumination, is gamely denied.'

Pearson's interests are strong, and it would be weird if they weren't. His concern to transform the hideous circumstances facing Aboriginal people on Cape York and throughout Australia is palpable. This essay's faults come at least in part from that passionate concern. It's confrontational, demanding and sarcastic, as well as erudite, personal and engaged.

From http://shawjonathan.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/audacity-and-education/… (more)